


fires without fuel

by sorriso (josi)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Lyrium Withdrawal, Minor Character Death, My First AO3 Post, Slow Build, Vanilla, sorry varric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-21 22:20:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11953839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josi/pseuds/sorriso
Summary: What a silly, trivial thing this must be to him, this great commander, this former templar who had probably taken countless lives in battle and then laughed over drinks afterwards.But he was not laughing, now."It's never easy," he said softly, and something like sadness passed over his face.(complete. ch 7 will be some sketches.)





	1. soldiers

**Author's Note:**

> i've never actually written a romance or even a multi-chapter fic before, ever, but i finally played this game (3 years after release, i know) and fell in love with the cullen/mage romance, so it just... came out. i twisted some of the canon stuff to fit my interpretation but mostly i wanted to write it as if it could fit.
> 
> i know there are a lot of other fics like this out there, so if you read this and you like it, thank you so much!

Thoughts raced as Tereza Trevelyan struggled to keep up with Cassandra's brisk warrior pace. One moment she had woken up in a prison cell, bound and about to be interrogated, the next they had asked her – her! – what she thought they should do to proceed. She still expected to die as she offered to charge into the Breach alongside the soldiers -- if not today, then probably as a result of the trial they were surely about to subject her to.

Approaching the ruins of the temple, she got a fresh view of carnage. She was still new to the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield and covered her nose and mouth as she passed by remains so twisted that she could not tell if they were human or demon. She was well-read, but not at all prepared for the real thing.

Her first battle was barely moments before as she had begun following her interrogator to this temple. The shade's screeching was still ringing in her ears now -- or was that just the horde of demons in the distance? Her hands had been shaking as she tore a staff from a dead man's hands and used it to protect herself from the beast. It was almost too much. And now this...

Cassandra stomped purposefully up the Temple stairs as green fire erupted from somewhere and obliterated the poor soldier standing at the top. He fell and she barely spared him a glance. It all seemed too cold, too uncaring... Cassandra did not even stop, but pulled out her sword and readied her shield. With a cry, she charged down out of sight.  Solas followed immediately after, wordless, staff in hand. Varric gave Tereza a glance of understanding, probably recognizing how shaken she was, and then he too pulled out his fancy crossbow and climbed up over the crumbling temple stairs.

Tereza gripped the dead man's staff so tightly that her knuckles turned white. If battling demons was to be her calling now, she had better steel herself. Those in the thick of the fighting have no time to stop and worry about the fallen, even though it was what she wanted most to do. She climbed the stairs.

Cassandra was flying through the first few demons surrounding the rift with ease, as Solas had frozen them solid. At Cassandra's side was another soldier -- all she could see of him was a flashing blade, shiny pauldrons and a feathery cloak. The two fought back to back dispatching a wraith each as Varric's arrows kept another from coming any closer. Clearly, these were all experienced fighters. She fought down a feeling of being utterly useless to the battle, and tried to focus on what she could do to help.

She advanced towards the small rift and cast a barrier on Cassandra and her ally. The man turned for a split second to see where this magic had come from, appeared to acknowledge her presence, and turned immediately back to his fight. She knew that most non-mages could not tell when they were being protected by such a spell.  This man had some kind of magical knowledge... armor and all, he looked like he would fit right in among the templars at Ostwick.

A shade loomed up over her from the side and she felt her barrier about to fizzle out. She barely managed to dodge out of the way of its claws as fire blasted from her staff, sending the demon roaring away straight into Cassandra's blade, where it exploded with a hiss, defeated.

"This rift is weakened!" Solas shouted.

Tereza raised her left arm to the sky and the mark almost acted of its own accord, arcing a tense rope of green energy into the rift. It disappeared with a loud crack and a rumble. Her fingers tingled and she rubbed her wrist. She did not like the sensation.

"Sealed, as before," Solas said from her side. "You are becoming quite proficient at this."

Varric retrieved a crossbow bolt from the ground as he muttered, "Let's hope it works on the big one."

Their new soldier ally was sheathing his sword. "Lady Cassandra, you managed to close the rift? Well done."

"Do not congratulate me, Commander," Cassandra said. "This is the prisoner's doing."

The commander turned to Tereza. "Is it? I hope they're right about you. We've lost a lot of people getting you here."

Kind words, sympathetic words. The empathy emanating from them was not even for her, it was for the soldiers under him. Still, it gave her pause, since they were the first of their kind she had heard since waking up on a cold prison floor.

"I can't promise anything, but I'll try my best," she replied, studying his face and noting his amber eyes and a scar on his upper lip underneath the stubble. She wanted to recognize him if they met again.

The commander bowed his head slightly as he turned to leave. "That’s all we can ask. The way to the temple should be clear. Leliana will try to meet you there."

Cassandra beckoned to her and turned to move on. "Then we'd best move quickly. Give us time, Commander."

"Maker watch over you -- for all our sakes," he said, and jogged to catch up to a limping soldier, lifting the man's arm over his shoulders to help him back to the temple entrance where the remainder of the Chantry clerics were waiting.

Tereza watched him leave. If this violent, cold, smelly unkindness was to be her life from this point on, at least there were people like that. Like him.

Cassandra grabbing her arm to pull her forward reminded her all too soon that she was still just a prisoner.

 

_

 

The rest of that day in her memories was nothing but horror, facing a demon Tereza had only read about -- a pride demon, it was, and much larger than she could have ever imagined. It may have been how she was tossed into a wall by the massive beast, or that she had sealed two smaller rifts just minutes before and was weakened, but as she raised her left arm to close the huge rift above her, she knew something was wrong. The last thought that ran through her mind before the Breach stabilized with a huge _crack_ was "this is going to hurt."

To her own surprise, then, Tereza woke up three days later, slightly weak but comfortable in a bed, in what appeared to be a home. She was not dead, and also not imprisoned. She was now being hailed as a hero and perhaps even a religious icon, all because she threw some strange green magic into the sky and passed out for three days.

She was a member of the Inquisition now. She was introduced to the people in charge - Spymaster Leliana, whom she'd met before, Ambassador Josephine Montilyet, a curt but pretty woman from Antiva, and her kind man from the battlefield, Commander Cullen Rutherford, former templar. Of course he was a templar. It was in his bearing. The armor he wore was now pristine, unlike their first meeting where he had been covered in dirty snow, demon blood and viscera. He was six years older than she, and he spoke of his men with pride and offered strategies with a lopsided grin that made the corners of his eyes crinkle up and tugged on the scar on his lip.

By the low light of the candles in that room in the back of the Chantry, she may have let her gaze linger on him a bit too long, and she averted her eyes to the table quickly when he looked back at her. She berated herself.  

Now they were speaking of Redcliffe and plans for the next few days. Leliana was disagreeing with Cullen, Josephine had a completely new idea to introduce which neither of the others liked, and Cassandra stood silently, already weary of the bickering, which left Tereza only to listen and wait for the conclusion.

She wanted very much to return to the cozy, quiet Circle she knew, with the chair full of pillows by the window that she loved and her books on the table. She knew, though, this was no longer an option. She was going to have to fight now. Not even demons anymore, but actual people, since there was talk of sending her into the midst of the mage-templar fighting.  She didn't know if she could handle having to be the one to take a real life.

But suddenly it was settled, and she was to leave with Seeker Cassandra in the morning. She found herself agreeing to go before she realized what she was saying, and now  the meeting was adjourned. As they filed out, Tereza put her hands on the table, trying to look like she was studying the map, thinking of her future sins and if she could possibly absolve them.

The commander was the last to leave the room, walking slowly in his tempered pace, so unlike Cassandra's intense stomping. He must have seen her face, she thought, because he stopped next to her, arms crossed. "Not too worried about tomorrow, I hope?" he asked simply.

She could not help but laugh a tiny laugh about it. Of all the people in the room who might have been sympathetic... you'd think it would have been the diplomat, you'd have at least thought it would be one of the women... of course it was him. The kind man.

"I've ..." Tereza started, and stammered, and tried again. "I've killed demons, but never had to ..." Her voice was low, she folded her arms up around herself as Cullen uncrossed his and leaned back against the table.

"To defend yourself against a living enemy?" he asked. "Well, I'll admit I did not expect to hear that."

"I'm a healer," she elaborated, still gazing down at the map. "Or I was studying to be one, anyway… At the Circle." She looked up at him. "How can I cause anyone pain? Or even death? How can I forgive myself?"

She had blurted it all out again, without thinking. She forced herself to look away from his concerned expression and instead looked down the Chantry hall through the half-open door.  What a silly, trivial thing this must be to him, this great commander, this former templar who had probably taken countless lives in battle and then laughed over drinks afterwards.

But he was not laughing, now.

"It's never easy," he said softly, and something like sadness passed over his face. 

His eyes were on her again, and the wistful look was replaced by a focused one. "I can understand your fear. You are not a soldier. Soldiers are trained to revel in killing, their opinions shaped to convince them that whoever just died deserved to die. But sometimes..."

He cleared his throat. "I'll ... spare you the details of how I was first expected to do such a thing. But I'll tell you that afterwards, I wrote the Canticle of Trials around seventy times on parchment to get that feeling out of my hands."

"I'm sorry," Tereza said.

He gave her upper arm a friendly squeeze. "You are in a better position than I. If it comes to fighting, stay at the back and use your range. If it comes to death..." He hesitated. "I know you have strength. You can get yourself through that."

"I can?" she found herself wondering out loud.

"You can," he said firmly, and then he was gone.

 

-

 

 When the first body lay at Tereza's feet, she found herself feeling... relieved more than anything. It was a templar archer, decapitated. He had shot three arrows at her, all bouncing off of her barrier, before Cassandra wheeled around and removed his head. "Maker take you," she had shouted.

The others in her party barely took notice as they continued on. She had not told anyone except Cullen how new she was to battle.

"You can," he had said. And she would try.

Little did she know just how much death she would be seeing. Solas had a spell that allowed him to burn enemies down to the skeleton in a matter of moments. She wanted to tell him to stop using it. He was as protective of her as Cassandra or Varric was, but she saw some kind of special ruthlessness in him she could not place.

And then they were separated. She had climbed up on a hill with Varric to have higher ground over the encroaching assailants. A mage appeared behind them, and a force spell blasted Tereza against the cliffside, and Varric fell tumbling backwards into the fray at the base of the rock. The apostate readied an energy barrage, but Tereza's blind reflex impaled him through the chest with a huge spear of ice. She wanted to look away, but failed. She saw the light leave his eyes.

There was no time to dwell on it. _Varric_ , she remembered, and peered over the rock's edge. He was limping away. Solas and Cassandra had finished off another apostate further into the burnt-down village. With that, the Crossroads was stabilized. A week was spent helping the refugees secure food and blankets before they were ready to move forward.

They would head back to Haven tomorrow alongside their new ally, Mother Giselle, but for tonight she had to sleep once more alone in her small tent in the woods, her travelling company in their own tents alongside hers. She welcomed the solitude at first, not having much chance for silence and reflection since she left the secluded Circle tower. Soon, though, she found herself reliving the events of the day in circles. She had tried to ignore the falling bodies, but could not imitate her hardened companions. She felt surrounded by death.

She lit a candle and pulled out a small copy of the Canticle of Trials she had found at Haven before leaving. She read through it, pausing at a verse:

  _Draw your last breath, my friends. Cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker's right hand, and be forgiven._

That look of profound regret that had passed over Cullen's face... what had he been forced to do?

 

-

 

Returning to the mountains brought her some relief. With this first obstacle passed, the days began to fly by. It was six days before she was making ready to leave again, this time for the Storm Coast. She'd had some conversations with her new friends, but the Commander was scarce. On the day before she was to leave, he returned, having led some amount of soldiers on an expedition. He saw her as she stood outside the village walls brushing the horse she'd retrieved from the Hinterlands, and raised a soldier's salute to her with a crooked smirk. She could not help but smile and return it.

Was she a soldier now? Just like them? She looked them over. Some sported rather impressive wounds, but most were unharmed, happy, and even boisterous. Did they really revel in the act of killing?

She happened upon him later, about to head into the Chantry. They walked together, and spoke of minor things –  the morale of the Inquisition forces, a little bit of his background in Kirkwall  –  when she wondered about how he'd come to join the templars in the first place, he supplied a response readily enough, but he didn’t seem to want to talk about his templar years. She decided not to press further, but instead tried teasing him a little bit – were there _vows of celibacy_ in the Templar order? –   and his flustered reply was so satisfying that she needed to resist the urge to continue teasing him for the rest of all time.

"Maker's breath. Can we speak of something else?" he had said, but in the Chantry candlelight, she had seen the grin on his face.

Their first conversation, she decided, was best left forgotten for now.

Somewhere deep inside her, there was a flame flickering, brightening. She wouldn't yet admit it out loud, but it was for him.


	2. liar

She had been missing for two full days now. The sun was setting and their chance to spot the Herald was slipping away once more. Cullen circled around, reining in the very same horse Tereza had retrieved from that first trip into the Hinterlands. The horse was cold and cranky, not used to such snowy extremes. However, returning to camp at this point would also be fruitless, and the argument he had been having with Josephine would only rekindle itself. He decided to search for the Herald until it was truly too dark to be of use anymore. The horse could recover later.

He had not been prepared for someone like this to be their Herald. In their first proper conversation there in the Chantry, she had bared a little bit of her soul to him, and he saw that it was compassionate, pure, and pristine. She was concerned for others, a healer, an innocent. If someone had asked Cullen what he thought a "Herald of Andraste" should be like, it was her.

When she had left on that first excursion, he was surprised to feel sorry that one like her should have to do such things at all. His guardian instinct, his urge to protect, that had been there for as long as he could remember had never flared up so strongly than when he beheld her. _Protect the innocent_ , he had at one time sworn, and innocent she was.

And she had sacrificed herself to save them all.  What a selfless, noble, stupid thing of her to do. And with no other choice before him, he had allowed her to do it.

He wanted to kick himself. Instead, he kicked the horse, urging it back towards the last campfire they had left smoldering. It snorted angrily but obliged him and they wove their way around large rocks and up an icy slope.

Cresting the hill, his breath caught in his throat. A pale figure covered in a good amount of snow and ice dropped to her knees and fell into the snow a few dozen paces ahead of him. Cullen had never gotten down from a horse so fast, cutting through the wind to reach her. The disappearing sun cast her in darkness as he came upon the Herald, lying in the snow, broken, exhausted.

"It's her!" he shouted, bending to gather her up in his arms. She was so cold. Her hide cloak torn. A cut on her chin. Scratches in her sleeves. Were these from demons? She was breathing, that was good. He scooped her up gingerly and her head was against his cloaked chest. He tried to wrap up a bit more of his cloak around her. There was snow in her eyelashes.

Cassandra had been nearby, searching on the opposite side of the hill. "Thank the Maker!" she cried as she caught up to him. "Let me help you-"

An urge to protect her small, frail form suddenly burst forth at full strength as he snapped "No!" much more fiercely than he'd meant. He caught himself and tried again. "No," he said more quietly. "I'll use the horse and have her there in no time. Alert the camp before me, if you like."

Cassandra stomped over to the Fereldan steed and took its reins in her hand. She glared at him, waiting, as if to say _That's my friend, too_.

Soon sitting atop the Seeker-led horse with the Herald of Andraste in his arms, he spent the ride back trying to calm whatever ferocious creature had awoken inside him to make him growl at Cassandra like that.

Cullen was in the middle of another argument that night, the three of them no closer to deciding how to proceed. When Tereza came out of the tent, he was too busy responding to Josephine angrily to even notice. Their argument continued until Mother Giselle's rendition of the dawn hymn found its way to them across the winter wind. He turned.

There the Herald stood, looking a little weak, but focused. She was listening intently to the hymn. Something seemed ... different about her. He had seen her return from expeditions through rain, sleet, snow storms, fighting demons, humans, beasts, bandits. But after two days alone and fending for herself against the elements, it was this that seemed to have changed her the most. The strength she must have summoned to make it back to them alone... where had she been hiding it?

From somewhere behind him, Leliana's clear voice joined in the hymn. And then more and more of the camp was singing. He looked around at them all. Soldiers he had recruited himself, some with noble families, some with no families at all. Elves, dwarves and mages, all beaten, all dirty, all joining in, solemnly singing. They made a sorry choir, there in the mountains, a starved, injured bunch of pilgrims. Tereza's eyes glittered as he watched her take it all in.

He finally began to sing, too. He hadn't sung in a long time, and his voice struggled to remember the feel of the notes. As the hymn neared its last lines, enough people were singing that it was echoing down the mountainside, making the small band of people into a false multitude. There was cheering. Some raised weapons into the air. All eyes were on the Herald. And her eyes... she was looking at Cullen.

The next words in the hymn... what were they? He suddenly could not remember.

 

-

 

With a renewed and driving purpose, the next few days saw the Inquisition arriving at Skyhold, an ancient, solid fortress in the mountains. It was a mess, but it was safe. With enough space and resources to get by again, Cullen set to work assigning duties and patrolling the hold, gathering even more souls to train as word got out of the Inquisition’s new home. He could not afford to rest. This was a good, defensible hold, and if he could help it, nothing so terrible would happen again to the people he was charged to command and protect. He chose the base of one of the battlement towers as his would-be office due to its location almost directly over the gate – he was determined to be the first to recognize any new threat approaching from the high, narrow windows there – but as the troops he assigned were busy clearing it out, he still must review his reports on this small, slapped-together table here in the wet courtyard. Papers fell into the mud constantly.

As he picked up one such report to try to clean it off, his hand shook just slightly. He noticed it now, and as he focused to stop it, a feverish chill swept down his face and back. He exhaled calmly, pushing it aside. It had been happening for months and he knew what it was – his body wanted lyrium. He could ignore the symptoms for now, but some remaining dread was always there in the back of his mind – it would get worse, it would get very bad. He did not know when, but if he kept focusing, he might be able to put it off as long as possible. People here needed his help. There was no one else to replace him as commander, he knew, and so he dared not falter.

He was rubbing a knot on the back of his neck absentmindedly, barking orders to a lieutenant when he next saw the Herald – no, she was the Inquisitor now – approaching to his left. It had been several days since he’d actually seen her face to face. 

“Do you ever sleep?” she asked him, some sort of laugh mingling with the words.

No, he wanted to reply. Instead, he reported the status of the battlements and surrounding area to her. She was in charge now, after all, and it was easy to fall back into speaking about their forces, the hardships of those under his command, anything except himself. He ended his informal report by praising her decision to accept the leadership of the Inquisition.

“Thank you, Cullen,” Tereza said. Had she ever called him by name before? Perhaps, but this time there was something new in her tone that brought him out of military mode. It reminded him of that first conversation, the one in the Chantry in Haven … it seemed like years ago now. He allowed himself a smile as he compared the small, scared girl from back then to this resolute figure before him now. How far she’d come – and all the kindness and compassion he’d seen in her was untouched.

She cast her eyes down to the mud they were standing in. “Our escape from Haven… it was close. I’m glad that y—” She stopped herself. “That so many made it out.”

“As am I,” he agreed, and she peered up at him for a moment, and then turned to leave.

A new kind of chill coursed down his back as he suddenly realized what that small interruption had meant. She had saved an entire village worth of people, almost dying from exposure in the process, and her concern was for him? He stepped towards her before he could stop himself.

“You stayed behind,” he said, needing to remind her. “You could have—”

Several pairs of eyes were on them now, and he could not bring himself to say more, to reveal that much. The mask of strict professionalism reestablished itself with ease.

“I will not allow the events at Haven to happen again. You have my word.”

 

-

 

The repairs to their new home advanced so quickly and efficiently it was almost startling. There was nothing quite like well-trained soldiers assigned to construction work to really get a handle on things. A garden had been cleared of rubble the previous day, and between the morning meeting in the council room with Leliana and Josephine – the inquisitor was currently on expedition into southern Orlais – and his late-afternoon briefings with lieutenants, Cullen found himself with something called “free time.” Not used to such an idea, he wandered the newly discovered courtyard, feeling a bit foreign.

There were others here, new and old faces. Chantry sisters bowed to him as he passed. They had already set up a place to pray. There was one of the herbalists that had accompanied them from Haven, setting up an area of tilled soil. She seemed alarmed to see him there, but he gave her a nod and continued on.

He came to a stop against the far wall of the gardens as a familiar, unpleasant sensation came over him – a feverish chill, a mild trembling. This time, it brought with it a wave of strange, powerful pain that began in the back of his neck and swept down to his stomach.

He clasped his hands behind his back and looked out over the grounds, exhaling slowly. Nobody seemed to have noticed him falter. Was this how it was going to be? Was work, was commanding the only thing keeping him together? He took a few moments to reassemble the fragile, complicated walls of concentration he’d put between him and the looming pain.

“Have we run out of guards?” said a voice to his right, in somewhat of a mocking tone.

It was the mage from Tevinter, sitting casually in the gazebo a few paces away. He was smirking, a book on his lap, a chess table next to him.

“Come again, Pavus?” Cullen replied, hoping the fading pain wasn’t too apparent in his voice.

Dorian’s sarcasm increased. “Here we are in a lovely courtyard, a place of reflection, or worship, or what-have-you, and you stand there like you’re on guard duty. How droll.”

Cullen inspected himself. Indeed, he had instinctively assumed the stance he had used for years when he was on actual guard duty rotations – knees apart, hands together behind his back. He smirked in spite of himself.

“I thought you were accompanying our Inquisitor to the Exalted Plains,” Cullen said, continuing to survey the courtyard.

“She’ll send a bird if she needs me,” Dorian replied, thumbing the book in his lap. “I had some business here, you see.”

“What business is that?” Cullen asked idly.

“Oh, you know… treacherous Tevinter business. Are you going to stand there like that all day? At least relax a little. I feel like I’m in one of your Circle towers.”

The brash comment caught Cullen off guard, and he chuckled. Contemplating his options for the next few hours, he opted for the solution he most expected would keep his mind from idleness. He stepped into the gazebo and pulled an iron chair up to the chess table next to Dorian, who sat up in reflex.

“A game, if you please,” Cullen demanded.

Dorian almost seemed taken aback for a moment, then leaned forward with a grin, beginning to set up the pieces. “You’re on, Commander.”

 

 -

 

The crow Dorian seemed to be expecting from the Inquisitor did not arrive, and over the next three weeks, Cullen had two more chances to play chess against the mage. He did not always win, but it was proving to be an incredibly useful waste of time.

This time, as Cullen was resetting the pieces on the board so they could begin their second game in as many hours, their conversation turned to, of all things, the escape from Haven. Enough time had passed now, he supposed, that a review of their strategies might be forthcoming, and he allowed the subject to continue.

“And she volunteered to stay behind,” Dorian was remembering. “It was the most senseless thing I could possibly imagine for her to do. I’ve never seen such a sorry group of beat-up nomads than after she went missing.”

“Mm,” Cullen said. Suddenly this conversation was no longer producing ideas that were useful to him.

“I still wonder how on earth she must have survived. To carry her back into camp as you did… it was like something out of a novel.”

“He would not even let me approach her,” said Cassandra’s heavy-accented voice unexpectedly, from behind Cullen. “He was so protective. It was touching.”

“Ah, Seeker!” Dorian exclaimed warmly. “Back from the battlefields, I see.”

The greeting gave Cullen time to breathe out his embarrassment. He moved his knight forward and sunk down into his chair, and then realized it was the wrong move to make.

“Yes, and Varric and myself are the first to return. Lady Trevelyan, Madame Le Fer, and Warden Blackwall shall arrive in the morning, provided no more detours are needed. I thought it prudent to inform the commander as such.”

Cullen nodded. “Thank you.”

Dorian gestured to the board. “Care for a game, my lady?”

“No thank you,” she said in her official tone. “I must report to Leliana. Good day.”

As she left, Dorian inspected the game. “Ah! Say goodnight to your knight.”

Cullen rubbed his temples. He predicted the next words Dorian was about to say, and yet he still dreaded them.

“So… always the protector, eh? Did you slap Cassandra’s hands away and keep her all to yourself?”

Why couldn’t they talk about something else? Anything?

Dorian saw Cullen’s expression and seemed to back down. In a softer tone of voice, but still amused, he asked, “Andraste’s golden knickers, are you that far gone for her?”

Cullen cleared his throat gruffly. “She is our _leader_. I … I would not…” He stammered and his defense failed. “I should go,” he finished, standing up to leave.

“Ah,” Dorian said sadly, “But our game…”

“Yours in three moves,” Cullen said tonelessly, several paces away already.


	3. conscience

Cullen had not at all expected that simply talking of Tereza was enough to unearth this reaction from him. He was reeling from it, walking briskly over the battlements to get to his own office. Dorian’s question repeated in his mind. _Are you that far gone for her?_

He certainly seemed to be. He couldn’t even deny it to save face. He had stuttered and just given up. Dorian’s simple question was the pebble that, when plucked from the dam, let loose a flood of conflicting feelings within him.

And there was nothing else to blame it on, although he did try – the absence of lyrium made him feverish at times, yes, but his mind was not addled. Tereza’s absence was long, yes, but there had been similar expeditions before, without event.

What he had been feeling that night after Haven, when she stood alongside the Revered Mother and locked eyes with him as everyone around them was singing … he had dismissed it as religious reverence, as appreciation, as thankfulness that she was going to be alright and that she had saved them all. Now he understood that moment more deeply for what it was: he had seen her reborn in that instant, imbued with something new and frail and invincible; and he had found her so breathtaking that it had made him forget the words to a hymn he’d known since he was a boy.

Maker have mercy, she would be returning tomorrow. How could he face her now? His chest tightened at the thought and the chill that passed down his back might have been from sickness or from nerves.

He was back at his station now, on the battlements. He had barely started to lean up against the narrow window to look out over the gate when there was a knock at the door. A lieutenant entered and a report was handed to him.

How could he allow himself such feelings? There was too much at stake. _She_ had too much at stake. There was no time for this. He resolved to bury himself in the duties of command for the rest of the day, and tomorrow he would speak to Pavus as soon as he could and tell him… tell him he must never mention it again. He must deny it. This was damage control.

 

-

 

The next morning brought some measure of relief. His sleep had been limited, but for once it had rewarded him with a respite instead of lyrium-muddled nightmares. As Cassandra had predicted, the Inquisitor and her company arrived early in the morning – he had watched their steady progress up the mountain from his narrow window. He was glad to see Tereza riding the gray Orlesian horse at the front of the procession, pale hair fluttering slightly against her blue cloak. He could still regard her as simply the Inquisition’s leader and nothing more, if he put his mind to it. Self-control was a templar’s way.

When he finally found Dorian that afternoon, it was at the chess table as usual. He realized he should have expected this; the man was spending most of his time out in the gardens to get away from some Chantry argument he had been previously complaining about. Now that the space was cordoned off to be used strictly for horticulture, the Chantry had no reason to pursue him.

The Tevinter mage looked up from his book. “I likely owe you an apology, Commander,” he offered. “I hope my remarks yesterday didn’t destroy our chances of me destroying you on this board today.”

“I cannot stay,” Cullen said. “I just wanted to ask –”

“Please just sit, my friend,” Dorian pressed, gesturing benevolently to the chair across from him. “I know you have a moment.”

Something was off about this situation. “What’s going on?”

“Please, ask me anything you like. Just… just sit,” Dorian repeated.

Was this a trap? What was this overly friendly man up to? Cullen obliged him anyhow, determined to make his request and escape as soon as possible.

“I just need to know,” Cullen said in a low voice he hoped would not carry, “you will not tell her.”

Dorian leaned forward, abruptly very interested in what Cullen had just said. “So it’s _true_ , then?”

“No!” Cullen blurted out. “I mean…” He let out an angry huff of air. “The conversation never happened. It does not exist. Do you understand me, Pavus? I – we, the Inquisition – cannot waste time on things like… like that. It _can’t_ happen.”

Dorian’s mustache twitched. Was it a grin? The mage leaned back, grasping the armrests of his simple chair as if it were a throne and he was the king of smugness. “Very well, commander. Let’s make a deal.”

“I’m not going to entertain— ” he started, irritated.

“Just – hear me out, hear me out. Play one game against me. Then my lips are sealed for the rest of time.”

Cullen’s laugh in response was still marked with his annoyance. “Why? Why is this so important?”

Dorian was already setting up the board. “Very well, if you must know. I’m … we are leaving tomorrow for Emprise du Lion and I just… I didn’t want to waste this chance to stomp you.”

What could Cullen even say to that? He was laughing again in spite of the situation, and the irritation drifted away. “Alright, fine. One game. But I won’t be stomped.”

Dorian played far more viciously than he had in the past, making reckless moves, taking pieces he didn’t need to and sacrificing his own, all while making remarks about his imminent triumph. The situation was so ridiculous that Cullen found himself both stumped and amused by his antics. He could not tell where the mage was going with this or what he was trying to accomplish.

They were trading taunting remarks to one another when he turned and saw her approaching the table. She was wearing white, her light blue eyes mirthful. She looked rested, vibrant.

Cullen started to stand up. “Inquisitor.”

“Please, don’t stop on my account,” Tereza said, looking down at the board.

“Leaving, are you?” Dorian said to Cullen, his smug smirk audible in his tone. “Does this mean I win?”

Cullen supposed he could not properly excuse himself now without it looking strange. He sat back down. “Alright. Your move.”

“You just need to come to terms with my inevitable victory. You’ll feel much better,” Dorian replied, making the last of a series of very horrible moves.

Cullen took the last piece. “Really? Because I just won. And I feel fine.”

Dorian leaned back in his seat. His expression, more than anything else, seemed … satisfied. “Don’t get smug,” he quipped, then looked up at Tereza. “What say you, my lady? I unfortunately have other matters to attend just now. Play a match against our commander, here? Break his winning streak.”

 _You fiend_ , Cullen thought. Had he known she was going to be here?

“Prepare the board, commander,” Tereza was saying, slipping nimbly into the chair Dorian had vacated.

Dorian bowed slightly towards her. “If you will excuse me. Duties call.” He raised an eyebrow to Cullen and sauntered off.

Making a mental note to never play chess with that man again, Cullen set up the board once more.

“We can make this a short one if you want. You must have preparations to make,” Cullen offered.

“Preparations?” she asked.

“For your next trip. Wasn’t it tomorrow?”

Tereza wrinkled her nose at the thought. “Where did you hear that? I’m not leaving again for at least five days. I’m taking as much of a break as I can.”

 _That fiend_ , Cullen thought.

Pieces clacked against the board as they played and made conversation, the sun about an hour away from setting. He spoke of his family openly, and asked her about hers. There was not much for her to tell him, since she had been in the Ostwick tower for so many years. However, studious as she had been, it was beginning to present a challenge to beat her at this game. She was clearly practiced at it, and it was difficult to fend off her strategies. Little by little, he slowly found himself taking less interest in the game and more interest in her.

The day before may have been full of nerves and uncertainty, but here and now, he found it easy and relaxing to speak with the Inquisitor like this. A dappled shadow from a tree above lazily swayed over them as the last hour of sun dwindled away, and he was soon imagining long walks with her atop the battlements, having chances to talk about more than just the latest in soldier morale or the status of their diplomatic correspondence. There was no harm in only imagining such things, he supposed.

“This is a lovely garden, to be honest,” she was saying. “It’s amazing what we keep finding out about this place.”

“To be sure, it wasn’t lovely at first,” he supplied. “An entire guard tower must have fallen into this place that needed to be cleared out. We sort of just… threw it all in there.” He gestured to the crumbling tower across from the gazebo they were sitting in.

She laughed, and it made him smile to hear it. “I shall have to see if we can replace your rubble repository with something better.”

As she turned back to the board to think of a move, he fiddled with one of the spent game pieces. Some strangled thought was worming its way out of his mouth against his will. “We don’t have to…”

“Hm?” she said.

Cullen cleared his throat.  “It’s nothing.”

But her attention was on him now. “You can talk to me, Cullen. Is something wrong?”

He felt like he’d just been drug out into the open after hiding in the brush. Maybe it was a bad idea, but he decided to finish the thought anyway.

“You don’t have to talk about the Inquisition, all the time. Right?” He tried a small smirk. “Some strange man from Tevinter told me that this garden was meant to be a place of respite, or something … and so that sort of thing should be, uh, left behind.”

“A strange Tevinter man?” She looked like she was hiding a smile.

Cullen shrugged. His armor clinked together. “Very strange man. Fancy mustache, though.”

She narrowed her eyes at him, clearly amused against her wishes. He was looking at the few freckles across her nose and cheeks. How pale and delicate she looked, as if she hadn’t just spent three weeks out of doors. But she looked away and across the courtyard, and her expression fell into worry.

“I must ask you something,” she said at last. He was about to say “ask anything you like” until she added, “Maker guide me.”

She reached into a pocket on her hip and pulled out a small leather-bound book. She placed it gently on the table between them – it was a copy of the Canticle of Trials. The warmth he had been feeling from the simple pleasure of her presence was now ripped away, clouded with unease.

“Please, tell me,” she said. “I think about it all the time. What happened to make you need to write this over and over?”

He was not prepared for this. “Why… why are you asking this of me?” _Now, of all times?_

“There’s something about your time as a templar that you don’t want me to know,” she persisted. “It has to be related to what you told me when we first met. Whenever I see you, I… I wonder what it could possibly have been. Maybe it’s just me, my own flaws. But I can’t be open with you, as you ask, unless…” Her words faded away, seemed to fall into the slender hands clenched on her lap.

“I… there are reasons I don’t want to… that is,” he stammered, and she said nothing, but was there, waiting. The sun was almost set, and the shadow of the guard tower was covering them both now.

“You would make a monster of me, if I told you,” he finally said, trying not to choke on the words.  He could not look at her. “What I’ve done…”

“Do you think less of me for killing the forces at the Crossroads?” she fired back, although her tone was still soft, patient. “The only reason I was able to make it through that first battle was from the strength you supplied me! I carried those words with me for months, even when…” She stopped.

He could do nothing for a moment, except let the silence hang heavily between them. To tell her would taint him forever in her eyes. To not tell her… would that be worse?  If she had truly been thinking about it for so long, would it be better to rip the bandage off the wound, and hope that the sting of harsh, clean air would heal it over time? It was definitely not a choice that the Cullen of ten years past or even five years past would have made. That version of him would have … would have never been having this conversation with a _mage_ in the first place.

It was tempting to just tell her about that first failed Harrowing at Kinloch and the feeling of his own sword coming down on that young girl’s neck. She had not yet turned, but his superiors had commanded it.

But, if he told her that, he would have to tell her about the nights afterwards, writing one parchment a night for the next seventy nights, unable to replace the memory of steel slicing flesh with the memory of fingers holding the pen. The days afterwards, with the Circle mages giving him sneering glances everywhere he was stationed, the whispered rumors about the poor girl. They said she had not needed to die, that it was a mistake. They knew Cullen was one of those templars assigned to Harrowings. Their eyes had been so angry.

And if he told her that, he wouldn’t be able to stop there. He’d have to tell her about the blood mage uprising exactly seventy days after he started writing parchments, the abominations everywhere. He had seen friends die, he had cut down those very mages he had sworn to protect. He had quickly been overwhelmed by their numbers. He had made it from the top of the tower to the second floor, mere footsteps from safety, before he was captured by blood mages. He would have to tell her how they decided to keep him alive at the top of the tower and torture him until he broke because they remembered the death of that girl and his role in it.

The way he was blinded with hate for all mages once he was freed … he would have to tell Tereza that. Tereza, who was one of them, and had welcomed the bulk of the mage rebellion into their ranks. Tereza, their bleeding heart leader who could not even sentence the Inquisition’s own prisoners to death. Tereza, who was still sitting across from him in the darkening garden, waiting for his reply.

While he was at it, should he tell her about his decision to abandon lyrium too? That the truth of it all was that he was a shaking mess of a man with a slowly degrading mind, put in command of ranks the likes of which he had once been glad to murder?

To heal her wounds of worry, he would have to bleed himself dry.

“I cannot do as you ask,” Cullen said quietly. “I’m sorry.”

“Why? Why can’t you tell me?”

“It was just a little remark,” he said. “I didn’t mean for you to carry the burden of it for so long. It’s best left forgotten.”

“Was it a lie?”

“No, but for your sake I wouldn’t—”

“Do you think me a child?” Her voice was still soft, but he could hear more and more frustration in it, and it was starting to anger him as well. “I may have been naïve when we first met but, I assure you, I can handle the truth of things by now—”

“Oh, I have no doubt!” Cullen snapped. “You are the Inquisitor, after all, and I but a subject for you to interrogate. Is that what this is? A child would have more sense.”

Tereza’s eyes went wide and he realized he’d gone too far. Just moments before, he had been thinking of becoming closer to her. Now they could not be further apart.

“Forgive me,” he said quickly, voice breaking.

“How can I?” she said with a cold laugh as she stood up to leave. “I don’t even know what you’ve done.”

He was standing up as well, somehow still wanting to stop her, to reconcile. “Tereza, don’t…”

It was the first time he had said her name aloud and not her title.

She was already halfway across the small garden lawn, walking quickly away with her head bent down. He watched her leave. He was surprised how much it hurt.

Cullen looked down after a moment and saw that the Canticle of Trials had been left there, on the table.


	4. hell

She did leave the next day after all. The war council meeting that night had been short and detached, and she announced at the end of it her decision to assist the villagers at Sahrnia as soon as she could. She played with the idea of staying in Emprise du Lion for as long as the matter took – months, if it was needed.

She had not spoken to her commander any more than she needed to. In turn, his responses to her were quiet, forced. If Leliana or Josephine noticed, they made no remark of it.

Seeker Cassandra rode ahead of her, with impeccable posture and stoic precision, on a black barded gelding. Beside her was Dorian, sitting his bay in a practiced, but reluctant manner. They were meant to meet Varric at the base of the Frostbacks, the dwarf just finishing up with some further investigation into red lyrium.

“Goodbye, warm fireplace,” Dorian was sighing as the snowy wind blew around him. “How I will miss you.”

“May the warmth the Maker grants you for assisting the Orlesian citizens keep you from freezing,” Cassandra said, throwing the words over her shoulder at him.

“Such a noble sentiment, Seeker,” Dorian said dryly. “Always so selfless. I’m surprised you’re not on fire.”

Tereza choked on a laugh before she could stop herself.

They made good time down the mountainside, making camp once they crossed the tree line. They would arrive at their destination likely the next evening, and Tereza found herself eager to begin work more than anything. How different she felt these days, she thought, staring into the campfire, than in the short few months she’d spent at Haven. That Tereza had been frightened, dependent on her companions. And now perhaps she was still a bit dependent – she still stayed in the back of the fighting, she still preferred to leave the more laborious tasks to her stronger allies, but there was something about being dangled in the air by a self-proclaimed god like she was nothing that had unearthed in her a sort of rage. She had survived the next few days alone almost purely out of spite. Her anger had formed itself into untouchable armor and she wore it now into the battlefield and through the snowy mountains. She felt it when she fought and channeled it into her magic. There was no such thing as firing a pure bolt of spite from her staff, she knew, but she could certainly pretend.

Let them all think it was faith that she fought for. The next time she saw the blood of a red templar dashed across the ground, she knew she would only feel vengeance. She would have time for guilt and remorse later, and she could rely on prayer for that.

Her thumb passed over the pocket on her hip out of habit. She remembered all too suddenly that it was empty now, that she had decided in the space of that instant the day before to no longer carry the Canticle of Trials along with her. It was a symbol of something she had wanted and had now discovered was not attainable. The cold, quiet war council meeting had only confirmed it – the commander bore animosity towards her. Perhaps he always had, because she was, after all, just a mage. She had received counsel from him on more occasions than she could count, but that was no reason to believe there was anything more. And now she had tried to force him to tell her things he did not want to say. Cullen, damn him, was right. It had been childish of her.

She blinked and brought herself back to the present as Dorian sat down beside her at the campfire, and she realized just how negative she was being. What had Mother Giselle called these sorts of thoughts? Oh, yes – a waste of time.

No use tearing herself down about it. She had leading to do.

“You’re stewing,” Dorian remarked.

“You’re … perceptive,” she replied, and it was meant as a compliment. For as much as Dorian said he liked to talk about himself, she was surprised at the man’s ability to read the emotions of others when he wanted to.

“Not perceptive enough,” he said. “It must have been quite the conversation you two had that made you want to leave so badly. Anything else I can meddle in for you?”

“The people need us, so we left,” she reminded him flatly, gaze still locked in the flames before her.

“True, they need us,” he admitted. “But you’re the one in charge, the highest of the higher-ups. They are having no rift-related emergencies, as is usually your primary responsibility in the field. You could have just sent a squadron of ‘us’ and stayed in the cozy castle.”

She sighed. “Sorry to take you away from your cozy castle life. Thank you for making it so that I could speak with him. That conversation wasn’t any more fun than I thought it was going to be.”

“You asked me to arrange a meeting between the two of you when you came back from the Exalted Plains, and I didn’t ask why, because I thought it would be a grand idea. I even got him laughing before you arrived, since stalling him made him so grumpy. Not that it wasn’t easy, but when you look so morose afterwards and so does the commander, I have to wonder why the outcome of that meeting wasn’t more… joyous.”

She glanced at him. He was wrapped up in a coarse camp blanket, as close to the fire as he could get without sitting on it. Clearly, he missed a life of luxury.

“He’s hiding something from me. Possibly something dangerous,” she said finally, slowly. “And he wouldn’t tell me. I persisted a little too much. He became angry and I left. What did _you_ think was going to happen?”

“Why, that you two would get together, of course!” he said, a little too loudly for her liking.

Eyes widening, Tereza glanced at Cassandra’s tent, which remained as quiet as it had been. “ _What?_ ” she exclaimed in a harsh whisper.

“Now that I know you were just going to question him, I don’t feel as charitable as I did before,” Dorian said sadly. “I was so sure he would confess his feelings.”

“He would _what_?” Tereza was still whispering. She felt a rush of color in her cheeks.

“I can say no more,” he said wistfully. “He told me not to tell you, after all.”

“But— why are you…?” She stammered out the words.  “Dorian, don’t lie to me.” She realized too late that the words out of her mouth probably betrayed her own feelings, as well.

Dorian reached over to squeeze her hand quite warmly, not only because it had been the one he had been holding up to the campfire.  He began to address her in a tone of mock reverence, reciting false titles for her. “My dear friend, Lady Trevelyan, who has done so much for me, who lets me stay in her big castle to relax while she’s away killing bad men, who brings me back lovely tomes of useful Venatori knowledge… I don’t lie to you. Not ever. And I can tell he cares deeply for you.”

She could only stare at him, wide-eyed.

“I was jumping at the chance to do something nice for a friend,” he elaborated. “Don’t let that get around.”

As he got up to leave her, stunned and speechless at the fireside, he added, “And for the Maker’s sake, _don’t_ tell the man you heard it from me. I wish to live.”

She stared into the dying flames for a while longer, thinking back on that conversation before it had turned south. Cullen had been smiling his damned crooked grin, speaking of his family… he had been asking her to stop talking about their work, and to just leave it behind… If she hadn’t ruined everything, Dorian’s scheme could have even worked. And they would have… and he truly had wanted to…?

Tereza could not elaborate on those thoughts. She felt a strange mixture of butterflies and regret.

 

-

 

Emprise du Lion was hell.

They arrived in Sahrnia with little idea of what to expect, and found it in shambles. What few people were still around were freezing and starving. Tereza immediately gave up the rations from her own bag to the first of them to ask her for food. Penance for unrelated sins, she supposed.

They were told of the location of a camp overlooking the quarry some distance away that they needed to claim to make any difference in the region at all, and set forth. The odd stench and crackle of red lyrium hit them as soon as they stepped out of the village. Then the red templars hit them, as well.

She soon saw Dorian fall in battle right in front of her eyes, and barely got to him in time. The red templar behemoth swung down a hammer-fisted blow at his already concussed head, but Cassandra was there with her shield, blocking a strike so strong it made the warrior cry out. As Tereza dragged her friend out of harm’s way, Cassandra’s cry turned from pain to rage and she forced the creature back, and Varric threw some kind of grenade invention at it that lodged between the stones making up its form and exploded, shaking the snowy canyon walls around them and tearing the creature in half.

It gave her time to help Dorian recover enough to sit up. She was focused on helping him, back turned to their foes, when he snapped “Look out!”

Pain seared across her back and shook her from head to toe. Some kind of electricity attack. She couldn’t move, couldn’t even cry out. Dorian wrapped an arm around her and twisted to move her paralyzed body behind his. The air tightened around him before a huge torrent of flame emerged from his staff. When she could finally look back, she saw a form that was nothing but crackling red lyrium and smoking bones.

“You keep doing me favors,” she groaned.

“As do you,” he returned.

Cassandra wiped her forehead off on her gauntlet. “We should be close to our goal.”

“We might make it there in pieces, but we’ll probably make it,” Varric said, struggling to catch his breath.

Tereza could stand up the rest of the way again. “Forward,” she said.

And forward they went.

They pressed the red templars back into the quarry that day, but that was all they could do, and even then they barely made it. Tereza used the limited forces they’d brought with them to establish barricades and cover, and the next week saw the four of them moving quietly and swiftly through the snow-barren forest. They traveled around and behind the quarry, since they could not break through, attacking their scouts and stray patrols and destroying anything they could that was within reach.

Seven days deep in this red lyrium nightmare, they came across a camp and dispatched the meager patrol guarding it, then discovered the cage full of Sahrnian villagers the red templars had taken for sacrifice, or slavery. Varric gently lifted a girl down from the slave cart as she weakly whispered how she felt the red crystals growing out of her bones, felt them growing underneath her eyelids and in her mouth and her stomach. The poor girl whispered her dying wishes to them all before they lost her. Varric buried his head in his hands there, sitting next to her tiny form in the snow. Tereza had to take a moment, leaning up against a tree, her head against her wrist.

More than anything, it cemented her resolve. She had to save these people from this hell. She pushed herself back up and started to move on, wordlessly.

She heard Varric quietly protesting, a few paces behind her. “Can’t we… do something for her? A burial?”

“Varric, look,” she heard Cassandra saying. “The ones we freed. They will take care of their own.”

Tereza glanced back. Indeed, the freed villagers had gathered around the body. Some were holding each other in comfort. A few were kneeling at her side.

She could no longer shed tears in this place. They had all been ripped away and replaced by red, crackling rage.

 

-

 

The next two battles were ambushes.

She couldn’t even say how they survived, but they did. The last battle, fought directly on top of the campsite they were supposed to be claiming, was almost lost. Tereza, in a reckless move, erected a barrier around her three companions but neglected to include herself. An instant later, she was almost completely obliterated by a red templar rushing her with his shield up. She was thrown into a rickety, frozen heap of debris. The last thing she remembered before blacking out was being grateful she had put that warding amulet on, because she felt the crackle of a shield spring up around her that was not her own.

She woke up that night with a groan. The amulet around her neck was shattered. She was in a cot next to a campfire, covered in exactly four blankets. Her companions were there, looking rather beat up, but all accounted for. Cassandra had her right gauntlet off, her wrist wrapped in a poultice. Varric had picked up a chunk of ice from the ground and was holding it to his head. And Dorian…

“Oh good, you’re awake,” he said. “Tell me, don’t you think three blankets is quite enough?”

She tried to laugh, but could only cough. “You can have your blanket back.”

As Tereza sat up and looked around, she noticed something. “This isn’t the Highgrove camp.”

“No it is not,” Cassandra admitted. “We retreated back to the village.”

“Oh,” Tereza could only reply.

“We lost our barricades to the red templar forces after the battle,” Cassandra continued. “There are too many of them. They are pushing us back. This is a job for more than the four of us.”

“The Seeker admits defeat?” Varric said in mock disbelief.

“Yes, Varric. I may be faithful, but I am not crazed. I know when a battle would be suicide.”

Varric chuckled, but it seemed to hurt his head, and he groaned and repositioned the chunk of ice.

Cassandra handed Tereza a note. “It’s just as well. This arrived for us by crow before the sun set.”

Tereza held it up to the firelight. “Reinforcements en route… the rest dispatched to… the fortress at Adamant? Activity has increased… now is the time.”

“It seems we are needed elsewhere,” Dorian chimed in.

“Good,” Varric said. “I’d rather die someplace warm.”

 

-

 

The sight of the full numbers of the Inquisition forces, _their_ forces, astounded her. When she first steered her grey horse over the last dune and they caught sight of her company and standard, the cheer that went up shook the ground. It drove some of the bitter dregs of their defeat out of her mind, and she urged her horse towards them all, eager to be done traveling.

The troops were making ready to set forth now that she was here, and she slid off the grey mare and handed her off to be brushed and watered. From inside a tent nearby, she heard a familiar voice barking orders. Before she could prepare herself to face the commander, he strode out of the tent briskly, saw her, and stopped.

She had been worlds away from him in Emprise du Lion, and the memories of their last conversation all came flooding back here, now, as they were steps away from each other for the first time in twenty-some days. His pauldrons and armor were dusty from sand, and the desert night was casting a long, hard shadow on his face – he looked tired. She might have even said he looked betrayed, but that was her own remorse talking.

He was the first to say anything. “Inquisi—”

“I’m sorry,” she interrupted. Suddenly all she wanted was his forgiveness.

His eyes widened, but just slightly, and he glanced at the guards stationed around the tent.

 _Damn the guards_ , she thought. But he stepped aside and held the tent entrance open.

“A word in private then, Inquisitor?” he asked.

She could not look at him as she walked into the tent. His gaze on her was crippling.

Inside, the small command tent was lit by several candles. Night had fallen, but the light of the moon fell in from the top of the structure, illuminating a pile of reports and maps on a cart turned on its side to be used for a table. He stepped into the space and quickly turned to face her, keeping close so they could speak privately without being overheard.

“We stand at the edge of battle,” Cullen said, keeping his voice low. “Moments away, in fact. Morale is high, but even one slip could make a soldier falter. So if you would have words with me, use caution.”

She was embarrassed, and fought down rising anger. “Yet another thing to be sorry about, then,” she muttered.

He was looking at her right arm. “You’re hurt.”

She looked down. Their last scuffle in the snow had left a sword wound on her arm that had lingered. Some sort of mild poison. She had hastily wrapped in in a poultice and left her sleeve rolled up to give it air. Now, she started rolling her sleeve back down over it. “It’s nearly mended.”

“I read Cassandra’s reports on Emprise du Lion,” Cullen said. “I fought for days to get them to call you out of there. It was plain you were outnumbered. I was—”

 _Worried_ , she finished to herself. It was plain on his features. She found herself wishing he could admit it to her.

He straightened himself up. “As your military advisor I cannot recommend these sorts of reckless operations in the future. You are not one of Leliana’s scouts, Inquisitor. You’re no good to us dead.”

“Her scouts’ lives are worth as much as mine,” Tereza interjected, remembering the heavy losses they had taken.

“Not to _me_ ,” Cullen said angrily, and then quickly made an attempt to correct himself. “I – that is…”

And there it was. Cullen’s attempts to compensate for those words were quickly fading away. He was letting them hang over them now, letting the moment be seen for what it was, no longer trying to deny it or cover it up, awaiting her answer.

They had been speaking quietly, and so the two of them were standing only one or two paces apart. She was now very aware of how close he was standing as she looked up at him, how his arms moved just slightly and his weight shifted towards her, as if he was on the edge of embracing her right there and abandoning all his military discipline to the desert wind. He was looking at her, all uncertainty but for the fire in his gaze.

With astounding effort, she looked down to focus on his dusty armor instead of his face. “You’ll forgive me, then? I… you were right. It was wrong to ask such things of you.”

“Will you forgive me, too?” he asked simply, earnestly, in a way that tugged at her, made her want to lean forward and close the space between her head and his chest. But instead of giving in so easily, she shifted backwards to study him a moment longer.

The light from the candles flickered across his face. He waited for her reply, attention unwavering. But he did look tired. It wasn’t just the harsh shadows of nighttime. There were signs of sleeplessness all over him. The journey here must have been difficult.

“You look like a fire without fuel, commander,” Tereza observed. “Will it be enough to get you through the fight?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Forget the commander,” he said. “Forget the battle. This is for me.”

And as he held her gaze for those next few moments, she watched his crooked smile fade and be replaced by something serious, something powerful and eternal.

Devotion.

“Commander!” came a soldier’s voice outside the tent. “Ready on your orders.”

Cullen bowed his head. A blonde curl fell forward over his brow. “I have to sound the charge,” he exhaled. “Maker protect us.”

“Yes,” she said, too late.

“Inquisitor?”

“Cullen,” she said. “I forgive you. Of course I do.”

A little bit of his fatigue seemed to lift away. He grinned at her, genuinely. “Go and gather your people, Inquisitor. With luck, I’ll see you inside that damned fortress.”


	5. forfeit

Was this a victory?

Tereza kept questioning it as they traveled back to Skyhold, legs dangling off the back of a well-built darkwood wagon. The majority of the horses were taken on ahead without them as soon as it was learned she had disappeared into the Fade.

Reviewing the preliminary reports as they traveled told her that the actions of the Inquisition had already made her some brand new enemies. The wardens were saved, yes. But that had made people mad. Absorbing them into the Inquisition had also made people mad. Being unable to save Warden-Commander Clarel had made people mad. Most of all, the loss of the Champion of Kirkwall had made people mad.

She had tried in vain to get Hawke to stay, tried to think of a way to get past the colossal demon without losing anyone, but Hawke had smirked, said “Sorry, Anders,” hefted her sword, and charged forth at blinding speed, leaving the warden Alistair to pull Tereza through the closing rift.

What was she going to tell Varric?

When they finally arrived, she found out that she didn’t have to tell him anything. He already knew. She tried to speak with him, but he waved her away. She saw tears in his eyes as she left, and it tore at her heart.

Even Cassandra was unapproachable for a time, clearly shaken by the apparition of the Divine. Dorian was buried deep in piles of correspondence, and although he was willing to converse, there was simply no time. All Solas wanted to speak about was how thrilling the whole experience was.

And she had not seen the commander yet. Asking after him had received no results for a day and a half, and he was absent from the council meeting for the first time since she could remember. Finally she set out to his station on the battlements herself, and found no Cullen, just a sergeant with only the vaguest of information.

“Armory, I believe? Or was it apothecary?” the soldier said blandly. “So sorry, your worship. He did leave but a moment ago.”

She resisted the urge to fire the poor man and set off.

When she opened the door to the inner chamber of the armory and finally found him speaking with Cassandra, what she saw shocked her.

Cullen was sitting on a chair facing the Seeker, saying something in a low, angry tone. He looked more haggard than ever, and as he brought his arms up to wrap around himself, his hands were trembling. He rocked slightly back and forth on the chair as Cassandra replied.

Dread washed over Tereza as she stood there in the doorway, unnoticed. She was not supposed to be seeing this. It was too late now, because Cullen turned and saw her there, and at once he was standing up and reassembling himself, trying to make it appear like nothing was amiss. He replaced his gloves, saying, “We will speak of this later,” and brushed past Tereza on his way out the door, whispering something that sounded like “Forgive me.”

She noticed more details about him as he passed her – his lack of color, the beads of sweat on his forehead, the way he refused to look at her at all.

Cassandra had her arms crossed, and watched the commander until he was out of earshot. “Lyrium sickness,” she said to Tereza. “He has told you, has he not?”

Tereza approached the Seeker, who was still stationary with her arms crossed, contemplating the forge before her. Lyrium? Cullen was no longer taking lyrium?

“No. He never told me a thing,” Tereza said.

Cassandra eyed her. “No? From what I heard in my tent when we left for Sahrnia, I suppose I should not be surprised. You said he was keeping something from you.”

“You heard that?” Tereza was almost embarrassed. “Of course you heard it.”

“Yes,” Cassandra said, smiling a little. “It is hard to keep secrets here. Sooner or later, everyone finds out everything.”

She paused a moment, collecting her thoughts. “Cullen has been slowly stopping his lyrium intake for some time, far before you and I met. Now he stands at the precipice. The last of it could finally leave him, or he could give in to temptation, take a dose, and start the cycle all over again.”

“He’s failed before?”

“Yes,” Cassandra said. “Several times now.”

Something about this new knowledge made Tereza angry. For him to come so close, then fail, and keep it wrapped up like this… it shouldn’t be something to be ashamed of. It was brave of him to even try. She knew the effects lyrium had on templars, she had seen both overdoses and withdrawals in the Ostwick Circle. For him to want to be free of such things… she found it noble.

She was surprised that she didn’t recognize his apparent exhaustion for what it truly had been at Adamant. But then, he was rather good at keeping things from her.

“If anyone could prevent him from falling to this urge now, it’s you,” Cassandra was saying.

“Me?” Tereza was unconvinced. “He’s had a history of pushing me away.”

“Even so,” the Seeker said. “You could try. Or leave him be. That is up to you. I say go to him.”

And so there Tereza was, knocking on the  side door to his tower a while later. What choice did she have?

When no answer came, she tried to open it. It was locked. 

She thought of what must be about to happen inside. The templar's lyrium kit that must be so simple for him to acquire, open on the desk. His shaking hands… She needed to open that door. This had to stop.

“He has become very loud,” said an uncertain voice from behind her. Turning around, she saw a boy hiding underneath an enormous wide-brimmed hat, sitting on the ground between several crates of armory weapons.

“Cole,” Tereza said, remembering how sensitive he was to those in turmoil. It must have all but attracted him to Cullen’s door.

“Ripping, tearing pain,” Cole said. “Waves and waves. All around him, he’s drowning in the fumes but it’s not enough. Everywhere he looks.”

She kneeled down next to the haunted boy, somewhat surprised that he could gather all this from behind a bolted door and a foot of stone wall. “I want to help Cullen. Could you help me to help him?”

“I want to help too,” he said. “But he won’t let me come close, and I can’t make him forget me anymore.”

She nodded. “There's a better way. I just need to get this door open. I need to speak with him. Can you do it?”

Cole lifted his chin and looked at her, eyes luminous under the brim of the hat. “Yes. You can help like a person. He doesn’t want you to see him. But seeing is what will help.”

He got up and bent over the door handle to insert a lockpick, whispering, “He thinks it’s his fault. The sword on her neck. Writing prayers in her blood. The memory always there, stained blue.”

The door unlocked with a satisfying thump and Cole straightened. He looked back at Tereza, satisfied. “I hope it helps.”

“Thank you, Cole," Tereza said. "You’re a good friend.”

“Friend,” Cole echoed, and moved silently past her, back in the direction of the tavern.

She watched him leave, then opened the heavy door and slipped inside before she lost her courage to do so.

She found Cullen undone.  

He was sitting on the floor in the center of the darkening room. The late afternoon sunlight was barely enough to illuminate him now as it slipped further away. He had removed his pauldrons and cuirass and tossed them down onto the ground next to where he sat, and leaned against the desk in just his undershirt, leg-plates, and greaves, propping an elbow up on his knee. The cotton shirt he wore under his armor was a faded dark red, and it was sticking to his skin. His head was bowed.

“Get out,” he growled. His voice in pain was hoarse and unlike anything she’d ever heard before.

She did not heed him, but instead locked the door again behind her. She stepped softly towards him and sat down next to his discarded pauldrons.

He finally opened his eyes to find out who was in the room with him, saw her, and groaned. The muscles in his neck tightened as he tried to sit up a little straighter. “Of course,” he was muttering. “Of course it would be you.”

“Don’t move,” Tereza said. “Do you… remember me?”

His expression told her it was a bit of a silly question. “I’m lucid as you please,” he said hoarsely. “Fully present, Inquisitor. It’s just…”

“The pain,” Tereza finished, remembering Cole’s haunted words.

“Cassandra told you then?” he asked.

She nodded. “Do you need any help with it? I could…”

“There’s nothing to help me,” he said flatly.

Taking his words for self-deprecation, she started, “You forget, before all this, I was training to become a healer. There could be—”

“Do you think I haven’t tried?” he shot. “Trying to heal the pain of lyrium sickness with magic only makes it worse.”

She hadn’t known, and the error made her swallow hard and back off. “I’m sorry.”

“No… I am,” Cullen said, and sighed. “Yet another thing I’ve kept from you. I can’t imagine what you must think of me now.”

“I think you’re brave.”

He made a noise like a laugh. “Brave enough to fail. Repeatedly.”

“No,” Tereza said with force. “Brave enough to stop this.”

Cullen contemplated that for a moment. “Believe me, I’d love to be free of it. The pain… every time, it’s blinding. A moment ago, I even…” He gestured to the opposite side of the room. A wooden box had been thrown against the wall. The lid had broken off and the bottle of blue lyrium inside had shattered on the stone. Glass littered the floor.

 _Good_ , she thought, and asked him, “Why do you keep going back?”

He exhaled in frustration. “Lyrium… when you’re on it, it mutes your memories. It can make things you’ve done less painful. When you’re not…” He swallowed, faltered as another wave of pain passed over him. “The pain brings those memories back. They get louder. They get _too_ loud.”

She understood. Trying to get him to tell her those memories, weeks ago, was to aggravate this havoc in his head even further. She was silent, sorry. He was silent as well, but he wrestled a moment with his words, about to say something, and then made up his mind.

The words out of his mouth came slowly, haltingly. “When the Circle fell, in Ferelden, the blood mages kept me captive for torture.”

“Cullen,” Tereza said quickly. “You don’t have to tell me this.”

“Let me say it,” he demanded through gritted teeth, and she fell silent.

The memories were beginning to spill out of him, as if he could no longer contain their burden. She listened to his pain-stricken voice describe scenes from ten years past, of the first Harrowing he ever attended ending in failure, of his being forced to take the life of the young mage and then being made a target for the later uprising. He spoke of the torture, and of his escape. Then he told her of Kirkwall, of his commander gone mad. She absorbed it all, wordless.

“Do you see now why I no longer want anything to do with that life?” he then asked her. “But the cause I have pledged myself to… so much depends on me. I must remain fit for command. If Cassandra refuses to replace me, then I must take it! I must.”

And his hand clenched against the floor.

She placed her hands on top of his clenched fist. She wanted to stop it from trembling.

He came back to the present, looking at her with eyes in pain, but clear.

“It’s not what _you_ want, is it?” she asked him.

The fist relaxed. “No,” he said. “But  these memories have always haunted me. If they become worse, if I cannot endure…”

She smiled at him softly, and repeated the words he had told her when they were only strangers, and she had been terrified and alone, and had turned to the kind commander for counsel for the very first time.

“You can.”

She left his tower soon after that, once he had assured her the pain was lessening and he could get up and drag himself into bed on his own.

Was this a victory?

It was too soon to say. But the spark had been lit, and although the clouds darkening above her threatened to drown out the flame, there was every chance it could still survive the storm.


	6. flowers

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was harder to write than i thought it would be. these two stole my heart so i had to finish it. 
> 
> thank you very much to those who read this in its incomplete form :)
> 
> one other note i wanted to make earlier but forgot: yes i did actually go to Emprise du Lion at level 11 and got stomped. why did the game let me do that. anyways into my fic it went.
> 
> thanks again

These days, there was less and less pain, and Cullen was pleased to realize it. There were still episodes, sudden and strong, but they were fewer, days apart now instead of minutes apart as his body was finally learning to function again without the substance. He continued his command as before, except that without the constant loud thrum of lyrium-amplified memories, it got perhaps a little easier.

He began including himself in some of the advanced training exercises that the constant flow of new recruits were subjected to – mostly sparring and mock-fighting, where any recruit that felt worthy could go up against the commander himself. His first and second officers abhorred the idea, and they were right to an extent – he was shockingly out of practice at first. The attacks he had been suffering were enough to make him lose all confidence in fighting, and he had kept himself out of the action to preserve his dignity. After the first few matches, however, muscle memory from years of constant drilling slowly resurfaced and he was soon defending against all challengers.

The training cleared his mind, replaced sickly blue fog with clear skies. The soldiers were pleased to spar alongside him, and even if he was bested, he could laugh it off. He was eating more, gaining back lost weight. He gained back strength he had thought vanished years ago.

And he searched every report he received from the field for mention of her.

Tereza had left, as was her duty, soon after the day she had placed her warm, slender hands over his trembling ones and restored his determination better than any prayers, vigils, or trials of self-discipline ever had. He had to thank her, and he would, but he wanted to do so much more than that.

He followed her movements through Orlais on the map during the council meetings. She had returned to Emprise du Lion and found a good portion of the red templar forces had been siphoned away to somewhere else, perhaps further south, and she was able to crush the remainder at the quarry with ease. She had then moved on, through the Exalted Plains, leaving in her wake three new forward camps.

To his absolute shock, weeks later he received a dusty report from the Western Approach saying that after she had captured a Venatori stronghold, she had faced a high dragon and come out victorious. A _high dragon_. Was she even real? Was this even the same person that he had lifted up out of the snow not that long ago, that had been so afraid to fight when they had first met?

He threw himself into a grueling training session that day.

The next report he read told him that after more than three months away, she was on her way back to Skyhold. He recognized that it was in her own handwriting, casual and loose. It made him picture her writing it, lit by candles in a sand-blasted tent, the firelight flickering across the freckles on her nose the same way as it had that night, moments away from the battle at Adamant, when he had almost…

 But after she had seen all the parts of him he had kept hidden from her, was there even a chance? She knew everything now. And he hadn’t had a chance to speak to her in the space between the day she came to see him and her departure. And her new knowledge of his past had over twelve weeks to ferment.

Would she ride through the gates to a hero’s welcome or come quietly in during the night? Would it be days before they would even have a chance to speak, or could he steal her away, straight off the horse, for even just a few seconds?  And what would he say?

What would he say?

 

A few days passed, and the clouds were thick in the sky, threatening snow during the late afternoon training. Cullen was done participating, and now walked among the combatants, offering criticisms where needed. It was then that in the distance, he heard the throaty call of a horn blowing from outside the gates of Skyhold.

He recognized the call. It belonged to the qunari spy, the Iron Bull – and he only knew that because of how months before the huge qunari had sounded it at full volume in the middle of the night, only for everyone to discover that he had just been incredibly, staggeringly drunk, and thought it would be a hilarious idea to wake up a hold of near five hundred people.

 A few of the recruits surrounding Cullen were cheering, and soon more were joining in. News had spread of the Inquisitor’s dragon-slaying adventure. He realized the best thing to do for morale here would likely be to call the training off.

“Recruits! Form ranks,” he shouted. Obediently, the thirty-some of them tossed aside their training weapons and lined up as the large iron gate began to clank open. But it was not the Inquisitor who entered Cullen’s line of sight. It was the qunari, on a heavy draft horse, with another figure in front of him in the saddle. He entered the main courtyard at a full gallop, whooping, and let the reins loose, letting the beast slow to a stop as it pleased. As the large horse cantered around the courtyard in a wide circle, the figure riding in front of Bull became apparent – it was a rather cross-looking Dorian.

“Never thought I’d see a horse big enough for me to ride,” the Bull said loudly as they finally came to a stop, in front of the recruit ranks. “Don’t get to do that much.”

As the Bull slid down off the panting, snorting horse, Dorian looked around at an audience he likely did not expect to have, then reached up to rub his temples with one hand. “Never again. If my bay had not gone lame on the last leg of the Frostbacks…”

“Oh come on, you had fun. And we beat everyone here.” Bull offered Dorian a hand, which the mage inspected and elected to ignore. He instead leapt easily down on his own, brushing off his cloak disdainfully.

“You blew that blasted horn directly into my ear, you awful, stinking—”

“Come on. Drinks!” the qunari said, whacking Dorian rather hard on the back. “We’re dragon-killers now!”

“You had better believe I need a drink,” said the mage.

An officer to Cullen’s left chimed in, “Is that a step forward for Qunari-Tevinter relations?”  as the two of them made for the tavern, which made Cullen hastily turn his laugh into a cough.

The ranks behind him were talking amongst themselves now, which was against protocol, and he was about to turn and hand out a reprimand or two when she finally appeared through the open gate, alone on her grey mare, and a cheer went up from them all.

As Tereza realized they were in fact cheering for her, Cullen noticed her cheeks reddening, unprepared for this kind of welcome. The few of them in the ranks who also noticed only cheered louder.

She rode calmly over to the stable-hands, eyes down, the complete opposite of the Bull’s entrance moments before, as the officers began to demand quiet in the ranks. Cullen left them to it and approached her.

 He had found himself expecting a battle-hardened warrior after all the news he had been reading of her, but as he took in the sight of her, he was somewhat relieved to find that she appeared much the same as she had three months before. Her blue hide cloak was more worn, patched up in several places, and her silvery-blonde hair had grown out longer, but she looked…  

“Commander,” she started, surprised. She must not have noticed him in the noise until now. The flush in her cheeks remained.

 “Allow me?” Cullen asked, raising a hand to help her down from the saddle. Also somewhat against protocol. He would write himself up later.

She took his hand freely and he helped her drop down. “If they’re cheering about the dragon,” she then said, straightening her worn cloak, “I didn’t do much. It’s Bull who did all the work, there.”

As she removed her hand from his, he noticed she was wearing a bracelet made of delicate white and pink flowers woven together. It suited her, he thought.

He had made no reply, so she was left to struggle with a moment of silence. “…Report?” she asked him.

“Oh, right,” Cullen said, suddenly sheepish. “Morale is high, as, uh, you can see. One full squadron ready to deploy by morning, one ready in the next two weeks.” _And one commander who would very much like a private word_. Why couldn’t he just say it?

To his relief, she broached the subject for him. “And what of our commander?”

He was finally about to make his request when an irritated sergeant appeared. “Permission to dismiss these unruly recruits for the day, ser, before I throw them down the mountain myself. If I may speak plainly, ser.”

Tereza smiled and Cullen crossed his arms at the man. “Granted,” he conceded. “Resume at dawn. But unless you want more of the same, have Cabot limit them all to 2 ales each.”

“Aye, ser, they’ll love us for that,” the officer grumbled, and saluted Tereza before turning away. “Glad to have you back, your worship.”

He was left with perhaps three more seconds to speak with her before something else happened, but he was lately known, after all, for working well under pressure.

“Battlements,” he said quietly. “Northwest tower. Sunset?”

She may have been concerned, or confused. But she nodded, and immediately after that, they were both pulled away by other matters.

 

The clouds had mostly cleared by evening, and Cullen was waiting on the battlements as the sky purpled and one or two stars began to appear. Working hurriedly, he had managed to just barely clear this evening for himself, and he now had his hard-won moment of peace there on the tower. It was windy and cold as usual, but the wind was from the east, and blocked mostly by the presence of the stone walls to his side. And as always, those dark clouds that obscured the Breach were to the west, tinged with green. The hole in the sky, they called it.

He turned away from it for now, stopping this train of thought before it turned into nothing but strategizing and planning for the next day’s operations. He still hadn’t thought of what to say to her. He had always been bad at words, when they really mattered.

But his time to prepare was over, because the far tower door swung open and the Inquisitor, the Herald, Tereza stepped out and began to approach him. She had changed into something dark blue, the bracelet of flowers still dangling from her wrist. He swallowed hard and looked out over the battlements, drawing a blank as he listened to her light footfalls up the stone stairs.

What a ridiculous situation he, the commander of the Inquisition forces, found himself in now. Why was it so difficult to simply express thanks to her? She had helped him keep his command – his sanity.

But he looked at her then as she waited there, concerned, confused, beautiful, and he knew. He knew.

He had been fooling himself if he thought that all he wanted to confess to her tonight was gratitude.

He had to say something, though. Why not start there? “I wanted to thank you,” he started, looking away from her and down the mountainside. “When you came to see me – if there’s anything…”

Some of the tense, worried air surrounding her evaporated away. “Ah,” she said. “I trust you’re feeling better? You …certainly look it.”

“Oh. Do I?” he said. Was that a compliment? How does one respond to those? “I mean, yes. Thank you. I’m well enough.”

She leaned on the stones next to him, peering up at his face. “I take it, then, you haven’t gone back?”

“Not a drop,” he said, and she smiled.

“The dragon was nothing,” she said. “The men should be cheering for you.”

Another compliment. It earned her a rueful smile from him, and she returned it, genuinely proud of him. It was a foreign feeling, and he felt undeserving of it – if it hadn’t been for her, there would be nothing to be proud of.

He continued, “The pain still comes and goes. The memories, too. I never told anyone about what happened in Ferelden’s circle. I was … not myself after that. For years, that anger blinded me. I’m not proud of the man that made me. But thanks to you, I can put some space between everything that’s happened.”

It was her turn to look down and away from him, fidgeting with the flowers on her wrist as her elbows rested on the stone. “For what it’s worth… I like who you are now.”

He was surprised at this. “Even after…?”

“I’m serious,” she said, and he heard a smile in her voice, even if she did not show it to him. But all too quickly it was gone. “Even if…”

“What’s wrong?” he asked her softly.

Tereza spent a moment more fighting up some impossible amount of courage. Finally, she took a deep breath, but the words that came out were quiet, deliberate. “Cullen, I care for you, but…”

The words were ice water on his face. _I care for you._ She did? She could? If words had been hard for him to come up with before, they were impossible now. _I care for you_ , she had said.

 _But_ , she had also said, and he fought down every stray urge that arose to listen further. She was facing him now, head down, and without the words to ask her to continue, he found himself reaching out, touching her arm lightly. Was this something he could do now?

It seemed to be, because it prompted her to continue. “After everything you’ve been through… Do you trust mages? Could you … care for one? For me?”

“I could,” he said quickly. “I mean, I do! Care for you – I mean,” he repeated, losing articulacy by the second. Was it enough to get his point across? There was so much more he could say – _I always have, you were never ‘just a mage’ to me, you could never be, not you_ – but all his thoughts tripped over each other and none of them could make it out.

She turned, put her back up against the stone, facing him. The look she gave him was magnetic. But something still held him back, and she noticed it. “What’s stopping you?” she asked him.

“You’re the Inquisitor. The _Herald_ ,” he replied emphatically. “We’re at war, and… you haven’t exactly seen me in the best light.”

She shrugged, shook her head slowly. “And yet I’m still here.”

With that, Cullen was finally allowing himself to feel the warmth of her affection, and he chuckled. “So you are.”

He was holding her before he realized it, hands upon her arms softly, letting himself be pulled in.

“It seems too much to ask of you… but I want to,” he said. _No, I must. I need to._ He hadn’t been this physically close to another person in a very long time, let alone someone he cared about this much, and so his head spun – he was close enough to catch her scent, something warm and floral – and she was looking up at him with blue eyes dark and unwavering, drawing him in.

As his forehead brushed against hers, he could not enjoy the sensation as he had wanted because the door next to them slammed open. The sound of it made him jerk upright and made his hands drop down hastily from her arms. He twisted to assess the intrusion.

“Commander! There you are.” It was a scout. “Sister Leliana’s report.” He approached them, nose buried in his notes.

“… _What?_ ” Cullen meant to simply ask, but it came out as an angry growl. It made the scout stutter, but he kept up his approach.

“Sister Leliana’s report,” he repeated. “you wanted it delivered without delay.”

Let no man say the Inquisition forces were quick to retreat. This scout was the embodiment of persistence.

The intruder finally looked up from his board and was greeted with the commander’s angry glare inches from his face. Eyes darted from Cullen to the Inquisitor behind him, a hand raised to her face to hide a mortified expression. Cullen began to wonder if the scout was going to get the message or if he would actually keep trying.

“Or… to your office! Right,” the scout said, quickly saluting and backing away.

Cullen watched the door close again, heart pounding. It had been a very long time since he had known this particular type of protective rage, not since he had lifted Tereza’s unconscious form from the snow and all but snapped at Cassandra when she’d tried to help. That creature had lain dormant for months but now was very much awake.

He should probably go and stop that scout before he told the whole barracks about what he had just seen. He should probably go review that report because it was actually rather important. He thought of one or two other things he _should probably_ do in the beat of that moment before everything in his mind rose to the top of a crescendo and instead, he turned to face her – he may not be too articulate at this very second but there were other ways he could make his point, here and now, before it was too late and they were interrupted again –

She was saying something now, she was saying his name in a tone that suggested they just forget about the whole thing, but he barely heard the words because he had already collided with her, pressed her up against the stone wall, and her skin was impossibly soft against his face as their collision did not stop and he kissed her and her words ended in a soft “oh” against his lips.

It was nowhere near his first kiss, but by all that was holy, he had never kissed like this. His fingers were gentle against her jawline, her ear, in her hair as they embraced at first, and then he pressed them against her neck to pull her even closer and she did not resist. She was so soft, and her skin was cool against his warmth, and her nose fit perfectly up against his.

The light touch of her hand against the unarmored backside of his upper arm brought him back with a jolt. What if she had not wanted…?

“I’m sorry,” Cullen was saying almost before they parted, his voice a bit hoarse, the words becoming warm breath against her mouth.  He pulled back from her against his own wishes to search the face that had just been up against his own, the lips he had just… what words were there? He needed to tell her how much he had wanted that, how it was everything he had wanted it to be.

“That was… really nice,” was all he could say, and the words came out clumsy and vague, boyish in her presence.

Her hand, still clutching at his shoulder, fell away slowly, traced down his arm and stopped at his fingers. Blue eyes sought reassurance in his own.  They were still inches apart, and the closeness of her was enveloping him in a tunnel-vision haze.

“You don’t regret it, do you?” she asked him, and he noticed the flush in her cheeks, the way she was pressing her fingers against his, pulling his hand towards her. She had wanted this just as much, and the thought of it made something thunder inside his chest.

“No! Not at all,” he assured her, leaning forward to touch her forehead with his, savoring the sensation while they finally had the chance.

This time, she kissed him first. Sweetly, shyly. He happily returned it.

 

“I should really get back to work,” he said later, lacing her fingers into his. Her right hand, not her left – she told him it felt somewhat unpleasant to use that hand for anything besides closing rifts, so he kept away from the Anchor.

He had honestly lost track of time, but there were quite a few stars in the sky above them as she leaned into him to bury her face once more into the feathers and fur of his cloak. It was growing colder by the moment, and his other arm encircled her comfortably.

As the sun had slipped away for good, they had spent the time making up for her three-month absence, and then making up for all of the time before that. Nothing too intense, because it was enough to simply hold her, to allow himself that at last and to be happy about it.

He lifted the slim hand he was holding to inspect her wrist, looking at the flower bracelet. “So… not from a suitor, then?” he asked wryly.

She laughed and something about the sound echoed the twinkling of the stars in the sky. “Not remotely. We saved a family from bandits outside Redcliffe. The little girl made this for me. I’m starting to think she had some kind of magic, because it’s been months since then.”

“Hm. Better have Dagna look at it. What if it’s cursed?”

She gave him a look, about to rebuke him, until she saw his grin. Then she laughed again.

“Really, I should get back,” Cullen said.

“Wait,” she said, and slipped the flowers off of her wrist, handing it to him.

He held it as if it were about to shatter in his hand. “And this is…”

“I don’t know when I’ll have to leave again,” she said, somewhat somber now. “And I’ve worn it for so long… You should take care of it.”

Words were, yet again, failing him. “I – I suppose I…”

She put both her hands on his and closed his fingers gently around the bracelet, and that was that. Then she rested her head on his shoulder, one last time.  

When he embraced her, returning the affection, she sighed into his cloak. “You’re making me not want to leave.”

He kissed the top of her head, contemplating. “I prayed that one day you could end up in my arms like this. Is that heresy?”

“If that is so,” she replied, laughing again, “then I’ll be struck down right alongside you.”

 

The better part of a week passed, and then the lady Inquisitor was leaving yet again, off to southern Orlais once more. The commander watched her leave from his tower, a smile playing at his lips as new memories of sweet moments grew bright enough to replace ones that had haunted him for a decade.

As he turned back to the candle-lit desk to peruse that day’s stack of reports and letters, he inspected it a moment. A small, delicate circle of tiny woven flowers adorned his tallest candleholder, as pristine as ever. He would glance at it often in the days to come, and find those sweet memories sparked back to clarity at the sight of it.

And even later, when he would open a drawer to find a book and instead recover his brother's lucky coin, he would know exactly what to do with it.


	7. sketch dump

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm more of an illustrator than a writer
> 
> do people put art in their fics around here? idk but i sure do not want to post this stuff anywhere else at the moment

clarity

 

forfeit (she found him undone)

Tereza ([here's](https://68.media.tumblr.com/1b9c303e79a98b5d27bb0f4b937ee018/tumblr_inline_ovvxpfRJkJ1qfnbr2_540.jpg) what she looks like ingame)

 


End file.
